Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Position Statements
NCTE and its constituent groups have developed position statements on a variety of
education issues vital to the teaching and learning of English language arts.
Position Statements !
Supporting Linguistically and Culturally

Diverse Learners in English Education
Date: July 31, 2005
Category: Curriculum, Diversity, Instruction, Literacy, Literature, Teacher Quality
Print Statement
Preamble
As public intellectuals and agents of change, we recognize that English teachers and
teacher educators are complicit in the reproduction of racial and socioeconomic
inequality in schools and society. Through critical, self-reflexive practices embedded in
our research and our teaching, we can work against racial, cultural, linguistic, and
:
our research and our teaching, we can work against racial, cultural, linguistic, and
socioeconomic inequalities by creating humane classrooms where students and
teachers learn to use language and literacy in critical and empowering ways.
Toward these ends, we have assembled a document that states our beliefs and
recommendations for action. This document is built upon our values and democratic
sensibilities in addition to a generation of literacy research conducted via multiple
methods on cultural and linguistic diversity inside and outside of schools.
Structure and Scope of the Document

We intend this document to provide teachers and teacher educators with a
philosophical and practical base for developing literacy classrooms that meet the
needs of linguistically and culturally diverse learners. Accordingly, we will first briefly
enumerate our eight principles and then follow with a more detailed discussion about
and expansion of each principle, particularly in terms of what each means for literacy
and literacy education classrooms. This expansion includes an unpacking of the belief
followed by a chart of suggestions and resources for K-12 teachers, teacher educators,
and researchers. Although not comprehensive—given space and time, we could have
easily added more ideas and resources—this document represents what we consider to
be a minimum philosophical outline for supporting learners whose cultures and
language fall outside the boundaries of mainstream power codes. Additionally, all
suggestions made for teachers and teacher educators, with some adapting, can work in
nearly any classroom.
Eight Beliefs for Supporting Linguistically and

Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education
We believe that . . .
1. Teachers and teacher educators must respect all learners and themselves as
individuals with culturally defined identities.
2. Students bring funds of knowledge to their learning communities, and,
recognizing this, teachers and teacher educators must incorporate this

knowledge and experience into classroom practice.
3. Socially responsive and responsible teaching and learning requires an

anthropologically and ethnographically informed teaching stance; teachers and
teacher educators must be introduced to and routinely use the tools of
practitioner/teacher research in order to ask difficult questions about their

:
practitioner/teacher research in order to ask difficult questions about their
practice.
4. Students have a right to a variety of educational experiences that help them make
informed decisions about their role and participation in language, literacy, and
life.
5. Educators need to model culturally responsive and socially responsible practices
for students.
6. All students need to be taught mainstream power codes/discourses and become
critical users of language while also having their home and street codes honored.
7. Teachers and teacher educators must be willing to cross traditional personal and
professional boundaries in pursuit of social justice and equity.
8. Teaching is a political act, and in our preparation of future teachers and citizens,
teachers and teacher educators need to be advocates for and models of social
justice and equity.
The Beliefs Expanded

Belief 1: Respect for All Learners
Teachers and teacher educators must respect all learners and themselves as individuals
with culturally defined identities.
We recognize the uniqueness of all cultures, languages and communities. As teachers

and teacher educators, we understand the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of
our society and that we enter our classrooms with our own social identities and
cultural biases. We see all classrooms as multicultural, and we work towards
respecting, valuing, and celebrating our own and students’ unique strengths in creating
equitable classroom communities.
K-12 Activities/Assignments
Identify and go beyond various cultural group holidays.
Investigate and complicate our commonalities and differences as
participants in the local and global communities.

Develop an understanding of the history of our diverse cultural practices
and rituals.
Name, research and share the personal histories of all in the classroom;
:
Name, research and share the personal histories of all in the classroom;
compile these stories and use as classroom resources.
Teacher Education Activities/Assignments
Go into and document our own as well as different cultural communities.
Conduct a critical historical survey of one or more groups.
Interview/research multiple generations (young and old) to gain insights
into their dreams and aspirations.
Develop locally and historically situated blueprints for the realization of

these dreams.
Have students investigate their cultural privilege as well as ways they have
been marginalized.
Researcher Stance and Research Questions
What does an investigation of the discourse and interaction patterns in
multicultural classrooms reveal?
What do successful multicultural classrooms look like?
Where are the points of tension in classrooms where educators open

themselves to teaching in ways that support the cultural identities of their
students?
Relevant References
James and Cherry McGee Banks, Handbook on Research on Multicultural
Education, Jossey-Bass.
Bob Fecho, “Is This English?” Race, Language, and Culture in the Classroom,
Teachers College Press.
Korina Jocson, “Taking It to the Mic”: Pedagogy of June Jordan’s Poetry for
the People and Partnership with an Urban High School, English Education.
Gloria Ladson-Billings, The Dreamkeepers, Jossey-Bass.
Sonia Nieto, Language, Culture, and Teaching, Lawrence Erlbaum.
Belief 2: Funds of Knowledge

Students bring funds of knowledge to their learning communities, and, recognizing
:
Students bring funds of knowledge to their learning communities, and, recognizing
this, teachers and teacher educators must incorporate this knowledge and experience
into classroom practice.
Students do not enter school as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. Rather,
they bring with them rich and varied language and cultural experiences. All too often,
these experiences remain unrecognized or undervalued as dominant mainstream
discourses suppress students’ cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1990). Ethnographic research
conducted inside and outside of schools reveals rich language and literacy practices
that often go unnoticed in classrooms (Dyson, 2005; Fisher, 2003; Heath, 1983; Mahiri,
2004). When teachers successfully incorporate texts and pedagogical strategies that
are culturally and linguistically responsive, they have been able to increase student
efficacy, motivation, and academic achievement (Lee, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1994).
For these reasons, we believe that teachers and teacher educators should actively
acknowledge, celebrate, and incorporate these funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff,
& Gonzalez, 1994) into classroom practice. In addition, teachers need spaces to learn
about the communities in which they will teach. This includes opportunities to explore
and experience the contexts in which students live and form their cultural identities.
Educators also need to learn more about sociolinguistics both in teacher preparation
programs and in ongoing professional development. Developing this kind of
knowledge may help to avoid linguistic racism or language marginalization (Delpit &
Kilgour Dowdy, 2003; Gee, 1996; Gutierrez, Asato, Pachco, Moll, Olsen, Horng, Ruiz,
Garcia, & McCarty, 2002; Perry & Delpit, 1998; Smitherman, 1999)
Develop units and classroom activities that grow out of and speak to
children’s interests and cultural backgrounds.
Encourage students to research and document life in their homes and
communities.
Choose texts that reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the nation.
Incorporate popular culture (e.g., music, film, video, gaming, etc) into the
classroom curriculum.
Have course participants conduct community ethnographies as class

assignments.
Select course readings that promote learning about language, dialect, and
:
power issues in society.
Invite course participants to identify their own funds of knowledge and to
reflect upon how they can negotiate the curriculum to reflect who they are
and what they know.
Ethnographies of literacy in settings outside school.
Research in classrooms where cultural and linguistically diverse students are
successful.
How do teachers and teacher educators successfully integrate the funds of
knowledge their students bring to the classroom into their pedagogic
stance?
Relevant References
Lisa Delpit, “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other
people’s children,” Harvard Educational Review.
Carol Lee, “Is October Brown Chinese? A cultural modeling activity system
for underachieving students,” American Educational Research Journal.
Luis Moll, et al., “Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative
approach to connect homes and families,” Theory into Practice.

Ernest Morrell, Linking Literacy and Popular Culture: Finding connections for
lifelong learning, Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.
Belief 3: Inquiring into Practice

Socially responsive and responsible teaching and learning requires an anthropologically
and ethnographically informed teaching stance; teachers and teacher educators must
be introduced to and routinely use the tools of practitioner/teacher research in order
to ask difficult questions about their practice.
To empower students who have been traditionally disenfranchised by public education,

teachers and teacher educators must learn about and know their students in more
complex ways (e. g., MacGillivray, Rueda, Martinez, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 1994). They
must be learners in their own classrooms (Michie, 1999). Using the tools of classroom-
based research to develop more complex profiles of their students, teachers and
teacher educators can use their growing knowledge of the lives and cultures of these
:
teacher educators can use their growing knowledge of the lives and cultures of these
students to design appropriate teaching methodologies and curriculum. Developing
these tools would require new ways of collecting and analyzing information about
students and their families, and then reflecting upon the appropriateness of their
curriculum and practices to be more effective educators. Consequently, such
investigation would mean using or creating new lenses to interrogate the impact of
one’s own teaching and planning. These lenses might involve designing methods for
getting ongoing feedback from students and their families and responding to that
feedback. Ultimately such reflective work implies that teachers and teacher educators
have a right to choose, create, appraise, and critique their own responsive and
responsible teaching and learning curriculum.
Attend and participate in community meetings.
Document the efforts of a student in your classroom through periodic

journals.
Form/join a group of colleagues who periodically use inquiry protocols that

facilitate looking closely at the work of students.
Talk to parents and students to learn about their linguistic and cultural
backgrounds and experiences.

Invite parents into the classroom to speak to all students on family life and
cultural traditions, or to share an area of their expertise.

Design action research projects that incorporate socially responsive
methods and material.

Have students write a “border crossing” essay about a time when they were
the “other.”
Expect students to read and critique multiethnic and multicultural children’s

and YA literature (e. g., House on Mango Street; The Color of Water;
Miracle’s Boys; Uncle Jed’s Barbershop).

How might teachers and teacher educators design socially responsive and
responsible classrooms in an era of high stakes testing?

What methods and curriculum materials are used in classrooms that move
:
What methods and curriculum materials are used in classrooms that move
beyond the status quo? In what ways are they successful? What issues do
they bring to the surface?

Relevant References
JoBeth Allen, Class Actions: Teaching for Social Justice in Elementary and
Middle School. Teachers College Press.
Linda Christensen, Reading, Writing, and Rising Up. Rethinking Schools.

Gregory Michie, Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His
Students. Teachers College Press.

Laurie, MacGillivray, Robert Rueda, and Anna Martiza Martinez, “Listening to
Inner-City Teachers of English Language Learners. “ In Boyd, Brock, with

Rozendal’s Multicultural and Multilingual Literacy and Language: Contexts
and Practices. Guilford Press.
Belief 4: Variety of Educational Experience

Students have a right to a wide variety and range of high quality critical educational
experiences that help them make informed decisions about their role and participation
in language, literacy, and life.
A wide variety and range of high quality critical educational experiences should be
centered in learning environments and educational curricula that affirm children’s
language and rich cultural identities. At the same time, these experiences should lead
students to build a deep awareness and understanding for the many forms of language,
literacies and varying lifestyles that exist in their communities and in the world.
Curricula experiences should serve to empower students, develop their identities and
voice, and encourage student agency to improve their life opportunities. A range and
variety of high quality critical literacy practices will create opportunities for high
student engagement and capitalize on their multiple learning styles and diverse
identities and personalities. When contexts for learning resonate with purposeful and
meaningful activities that touch learners’ emotional wellspring, deep learning occurs,
making deficit views of teaching and learning unviable and untenable.
Examine and critique popular culture as a voice for different cultural groups.
Discuss the ways in which language is used to express feelings. Have
students write their own songs or poems for posting on a website.

Have learners read autobiographies of children their age and then write their
:
Have learners read autobiographies of children their age and then write their
own stories. As a group, compare and contrast their stories with the ones
they read. Discuss what students have learned about themselves and
others?
Ask students to examine newspaper articles, television reports, and

websites about their cultural group. Do they agree/disagree with the ways
My Account
the stories have been told? What is another way the stories could have been
told? Write the other way.
Shop
Have preservice and inservice teachers create a curriculum that uses a
Search
variety of cross-cultural texts from popular culture to teach literacy lessons.
How is this curriculum different from and similar

Blog to other literacy curricula?
Ask preservice and inservice teachers to make a list of the most interesting
activities that they did when they were in school. Critique why these
activities were memorable and develop a list of criteria for meaning learning
Membership
experiences. Use this list to critique or develop curricula.
Have preservice and inservice teachers document

Eventsthe daily lives of new
immigrant parents and create a literacy curriculum that would respond to
Resources
the needs, interests and learning styles of their children. Describe how the
parents would be involved in your curriculum.
Research
Groups
Examine teacher and pupils’ attitudes toward popular culture as a context
About
for teaching and learning before and after implementation of a popular
culture curriculum.
Get Involved
What are the roles of class and cultural histories in influencing literacy
Renew!
educators’ theories and ways of teaching and learning?
Using multiple critical literacy lenses, examine the literacy curricula from
several schools. Match the findings to current best practices in critical
literacy education.
What are the effects of social conditions on children’s personalities and

:
learning preferences?
Relevant References
Linda Darling-Hammond, The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating
Schools that Work, Jossey-Bass.

Maisha Fisher, “From the coffee house to the school house: The promise and
potential of spoken word poetry in school contexts.” English Education.

Rebecca Oxford, “Personality type in the foreign or second language
classroom: Theoretical and empirical perspectives.” In Horning and Sudol,
Understanding Literacy: Personality Preference in Rhetorical and

Psycholinguistic Contexts, Hampton.
Ira Shor and Caroline Pari, Critical Literacy in Action: Writing Words,
Changing Worlds. Boynton/Cook.
Belief 5: Modeling Practice

Educators need to model culturally responsive and socially responsible practices for
students.
When English educators model culturally responsive practices they explicitly

acknowledge and incorporate students’ funds of knowledge. Modeling effective
teaching practices involves building on and consciously referring to the knowledge
base of said practices. The process of modeling depends on carefully planned
demonstrations, experiences, and activities. As part of this process, educators help
students collectively examine experiences in light of their own learning, knowledge,
and goals. These discussions may help learners not only develop language for how or if
experiences support learning, but also will aid in identifying experiences that help
learners examine whose English “counts” and in what contexts.
Initiate explicit discussions on reading by disclosing your own reading
preferences and processes. The discussion may lead to a subsequent

discussion on what texts students have read during their formal school
careers. Who wrote these texts? Whose texts aren’t being read? Does this
matter? Why is this problematic?
Invite students to bring in culturally relevant texts (e.g., songs, self-written
poetry) and ask them to create a glossary for difficult (for the teacher) to
:
poetry) and ask them to create a glossary for difficult (for the teacher) to
understand language. After this experience, teacher may initiate discussion
on being bi-lingual/cultural. In addition, teachers can also bring in texts
relevant to the lives of students.

Initiate a classroom conversation on a controversial topic with the one
caveat being that participants use only one-syllable words. After the
discussion, participants discuss how it feels to have lots of ideas and limited
language to express them.
Publicly write or read in the moment of teaching – reflecting aloud on

literacy decisions, questions, and concerns – making the work of learning
more transparent. This activity is particularly powerful if the teacher writes

via power point or on a transparency, or reads from a text the students can
see.

Types of research:Participant-observer; ethnographic; action research; self-
study.
Sample question: What does modeling in action look like? What sorts of
moves do teachers make to initiate it? What sense do students make of
these experiences?
Relevant References
Geneva Gay, Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice.

Carol Lee. “Bridging Home and School Literacies: Models for Culturally
Responsive Teaching, A Case for African American English, In Heath and

Lapp, A Handbook for Literacy Educators: Research on Teaching the
Communicative and Visual Arts, Macmillan.

Ruth Schoenbach, Cynthia Greenleaf, Christine Cziko, and Lori Hurwitz,
Reading for Understanding, Jossey-Bass.
:
Belief 6: Critical Users of Language
All students need to be taught mainstream power codes and become critical users of
language while also having their home and street codes honored.
English language arts teachers live a contradiction. We find ourselves charged to teach
native speakers and second language learners alike. Yet, according to contemporary
research, native speakers know all of the rules of their native dialect (typically by the
time they enter public schools at the age of five or six), and second language learners
need not so much instruction, but immersion. Ultimately we know both groups and,
indeed, all language users have a right to be informed about and practiced in the
dialect of the dominant culture, also mythologized as “Standard English.” Teachers are
responsible for giving all students the tools and resources to access the Language of
Wider Communication, both spoken and written. However, it is not enough to just
“teach” the mainstream power codes; teachers need to foster ongoing and critical
examinations with their students of how particular codes came into power, why
linguistic apartheid exists, and how even their own dialectical and slang patterns are
often appropriated by the dominant culture. Thus, our dilemma: how do we offer both
groups ample opportunities to learn and practice their usage of this “prestige dialect”
while at the same time recognizing the communicative equality and linguistic validity
of their home dialects and languages? This document seeks to provide an answer,
additional resources, and questions in answering that charge.
Have students compose across codes.
Have students make dialectical translations (e.g., writing a Shakespearean

soliloquy in street language or a poem written in a marginalized dialect into
a privileged dialect), then discuss what gets gained and lost through such
translation.
Create dialectical and slang-based lexicons.
Have students become ethnographers into language, recording and

analyzing the ways language plays out in their lives.
Conduct student/class interviews around language power issues.

Interact with “Do You Speak American (documentary & website).
Develop idiolectical autobiographies.

:
What are the benefits, if any, of raising pre- and inservice teachers’
awareness of the multi-dialectical nature of American society?
What happens when pre- or inservice language arts programs for teachers
attempt to lead teachers to understand the mythical and socially
constructed nature of the socially- favored dialect contemporarily labeled
“Standard English?”
Relevant References
Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill, Language Myths, Penguin.

David and Yvonne Freeman, Essential Linguistics, Heinemann.
Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation, Penguin.
Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory, Bantam Books.
Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes, American English, Blackwell.
Belief 7: Crossing Cultural Boundaries

Teachers and teacher educators must be willing to cross traditional, personal and
professional boundaries in pursuit of social justice and equity.
While there are discussions about whether “we” can or cannot teach “others,” the fact
remains that English educators do just that every day. There is and will continue to be a
disparity between the racial, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds of English
educators and their students. Whereas the percentage of white female English
educators—estimated at about 85-90 per cent—in U.S. schools has remained constant
(Snyder & Hoffman, 2002), the students with whom they work have and will continue
to become increasingly diverse. Teacher candidates will need to understand and
acknowledge racial and socioeconomic inequities that exist and that schools
perpetuate.
As part of their teacher education, they will need to acknowledge the limits of their
personal knowledge as well as experience the privileges afforded them by virtue of
their race and class. Part of the curriculum for English educators will involve crossing
personal boundaries in order to study, embrace and build understanding of “other.”
The purpose of boundary crossing is not to simply have an experience with the “other,”
but to use that experience to advocate for the advancement for all. While the
stereotypical demographic teacher population of the white, middle-class, female will
often have to cross more distinct boundaries, other preservice teachers who are more
linguistically, culturally, racially, and socioeconomically aligned with the growing
:
linguistically, culturally, racially, and socioeconomically aligned with the growing
diverse student population will have to engage in “making the strange familiar, and
making the familiar strange.”
Ultimately, teacher candidates will need to engage in projects that allow them to study
their lives as a way to recognize their limits and to complement the work they will do in
crossing personal boundaries. This may involve learning language, studying culture,
and visiting with students and their families. In short, we can’t do what we’ve always
done because we don’t have the same students we had before (Kansas National
Education Association, 2003).
Develop sustained contact with participants from diverse communities.

Develop projects on different cultural practices.
Accomplish the projects above via audio and video tape interviewing;
transcribing, studying, and compiling the stories of people from different

cultures/places; collecting oral histories; all to be used as classroom
resources.
Use documentary films from PBS, etc., as a resource, designing carefully-
phrased pre-post viewing questions and activities.
Go into a different cultural community and interview people different than

you. Compare and contrast their lives with your own. It’s useful to have a
specific class focus for the interviews and to brainstorm with students to
arrive at the focus.
Write about a “border crossing” and study the contrasts between
prior/known experience and others’ experience.
Replicate the experience of non-English-literate families by having class
participants read labels from common supermarket items with words

blacked out, compelling them to “buy” supplies for their families without the
ability to read words.
:
Types of research:Participant-observer; ethnographic; action research; self-
study.
Sample question: What is the nature of the lived experiences of new
immigrants in public schools?
Relevant References
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Owl
Books.
Victoria Purcell-Gates, Other People’s Words, Harvard University Press.
Shirley Brice Heath, Ways with Words, Cambridge University Press.
Deborah Hicks, Reading Lives: Working-Class Children and Literacy

Learning, Teachers College Press.
Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary, Penguin.
Victor Villanueva, Jr. Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color,
NCTE.
Belief 8: Teaching as a Political Act

Teaching is a political act, and in our preparation of future teachers and citizens,
teachers and teacher educators need to be advocates for and models of social justice
and equity.
We recognize that teachers and teacher educators have the potential to function as
change agents in their classrooms, schools, and communities. Social justice-oriented
teachers and teacher educators play a significant role in seeking alternative ways to
address various forms of official knowledge with their students, especially forms of
official knowledge that marginalize certain groups while privileging others. We also
believe that effective literacy teachers of diverse students envision their classrooms as
sites of struggle and transformative action in the service of academic literacy
development and social change.
Towards these ends, we recognize the importance of employing a critical lens when
engaging preservice and inservice teachers, a lens that enables these teachers to
understand and value a stance toward literacy teaching that also promotes critical
consciousness, social justice, and equity. Through praxis, the combination of active
reflection and reflective action (Freire, 1970), teachers and teacher educators are able
to build and strengthen collective efforts toward individual and social transformation.
Our desire is for teachers and teacher educators to continue to expand relevant course
materials, activities, methods, and experience in serving diverse students in the 21st
:
materials, activities, methods, and experience in serving diverse students in the 21st
century in the pursuit of equity, achievement, and justice.
Encourage students to develop critical perspectives through community-
based research and action projects.

Increase the shared knowledge base with students, parents, and other local
actors; regularly tap into students’ funds of knowledge.
Use classroom approaches that empower students socially and

academically.
Negotiate roles and go beyond teacher-as-expert and student-as-novice.
Be explicit with students about your own positions as political agents.
Have preservice and inservice teachers write and revise philosophical

statements. It is instructive to do this at 2-3 different points in a year.
Utilize critical education texts in teacher credential courses, such as the
many we have cited here.

Provide preservice teachers with the tools they need to conduct critical,
teacher-action research.
Promote dialogue in teacher education courses about concepts such as
praxis, empowerment, pedagogy, etc, and why they are important. Help
learners to see why teaching begins here. Make assignments that help them
track their own development.
How do teachers develop and maintain a critical teaching stance?

What does a critical education look like? How does it vary and/or remain
constant in different contexts?
How does one practice critical education in literacy classrooms?
How can teacher educators get the most from critical inquiry stances within
the limits of 15-week semesters or 10-week terms?

Relevant References
:
Relevant References
Michael Apple, Ideology and Curriculum, Routledge.
John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum, University of Chicago Press.
Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum.
Henry Giroux, Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the
Opposition, Bergin & Garvey.

Bell Hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, Routledge.
Peter McLaren, Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the
New Millennium, Westview Press.
References and Additional Recommendations

Allen, J. (Ed.). (1999). Class actions: Teaching for social justice in elementary and
middle school. New York: Teachers College Press.
Allington, R. L & Walmsley, S. A. (Eds.). (1995). No quick fix: Rethinking literacy

programs in America’s elementary schools. Newark, DE: International Reading
Association.
Apple, M. (1990). Ideology and curriculum. New York: Routledge.
Bank, J. & Banks, C. (2003). Handbook on research on multicultural education (2nd

Ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bauer, L. & Trudgill, P. (1998). Language myths. New York: Penguin.
Boyd, F., Brock, C. H. with Rozendal, M. S. (Eds.). (2004). Multicultural and multilingual
literacy and language: Contexts and practices. New York: Guilford Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. (R. Nice, Trans). Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Christensen, L. (2000). Reading, writing, and rising up. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking
Schools.
Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). The right to learn. A blueprint for creating schools that
work. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Daspit, T. & Weaver, J. A. (1999). Popular culture and critical pedagogy. Reading,
constructing, connecting. New York, NY: Garland.
Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other
people’s children. Harvard Educational Review, 58 (3), 280-298.
Delpit, L, & Kilgour Dowdy, J. (Eds.) (2003). The skin that we speak: Thoughts on
:
Delpit, L, & Kilgour Dowdy, J. (Eds.) (2003). The skin that we speak: Thoughts on
language and culture in the classroom. New York: The New Press.
Dewey, J. (1932/1990). The child and the curriculum/The school and society. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Dyson, A. H. (2005). Crafting “The humble prose of living”: Rethinking oral/written

relations in the echoes of spoken word. English Education, 37(2), 149-164.
Ehrenreich, B. (2001). Nickel and dimed: On (not) getting by in America. New York:
Metropolitan Books.
Fecho, B. (2004). “Is this English?” Race, language, and culture in the classroom. New
York: Teachers College Press.
Fisher, M.T. (2003). Open mics and open minds: Spoken word poetry in African
Diaspora Participatory Literacy Communities. Harvard Educational Review, 73 (3), 362-
389.
Fisher, M T. (2004). “The song is unfinished”: The new literate and literary. Written
Communication, 21(3), 290-312.
Fisher, M.T. (2005). From the coffee house to the schoolhouse: The promise and
potential of spoken word poetry in school contexts. English Education, 37 (2), 115-131.
Freeman, D. & Freeman, Y. (2004). Essential linguistics: What you need to know to
teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, and grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New
York: Teachers College Press.
Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London, UK:
Routledge-Falmer.
Giroux, H. (2001). Theory and resistance in education: Towards a pedagogy for the
opposition (2nd Ed.). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Gordon, L. (2000). Existenia Africana: Understanding Africana existential thought. New

York: Routledge.
Gutierrez, K., Asato, J., Pacheco, M., Moll, L., Olson, K., Horng, E., Ruiz, R., Garcia, E., &
McCarty, T. (2002). “Sounding American”: The consequences of new reforms on English
language learners. Reading Research Quarterly, 37 (3), 328-343.
Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and
classrooms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hicks, D. (2002). Reading lives: Working-class children and literacy learning. New York:
:
Hicks, D. (2002). Reading lives: Working-class children and literacy learning. New York:
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This document was created in part as a result of the 2005 Conference on English
Education Leadership and Policy Summit, Suzanne Miller, CEE Chair, and Dana L. Fox,
CEE Leadership and Policy Summit Chair.
Participants and authors in the “Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse

Learners in English Education” thematic strand group of the CEE Summit included:
Co-Conveners: Bob Fecho and Fenice Boyd

Mary Ariail, Georgia State University
Fenice Boyd, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Bob Fecho, University of Georgia
Maisha Fisher, Emory University

Mary K. Healy, University of California, Office of the President (Retired)
Korina Jocson, Stanford University
Kezia McNeal, Georgia State University
Ernest Morrell, Michigan State University
Tom Meyer, State University of New York, New Paltz

Jeanne Smith Muzzillo, Bradley University
Gertrude Tinker Sachs, Georgia State University
Charnita West, Georgia State University
Robert Williams, Radford University
If you wish to send a response to this CEE belief statement, please email
elate@ncte.org and specify which statement you are commenting on in the Subject of
your email.
This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission
from NCTE.
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Position Statements

Supporting Linguistically and Culturally

Structure and Scope of the Document

Eight Beliefs for Supporting Linguistically and

2. Students bring funds of knowledge to their learning communities, and,

recognizing this, teachers and teacher educators must incorporate this

3. Socially responsive and responsible teaching and learning requires an

teacher educators must be introduced to and routinely use the tools of

practitioner/teacher research in order to ask difficult questions about their

justice and equity.

The Beliefs Expanded

We recognize the uniqueness of all cultures, languages and communities. As teachers

Identify and go beyond various cultural group holidays.

Investigate and complicate our commonalities and differences as

participants in the local and global communities.

compile these stories and use as classroom resources.

Teacher Education Activities/Assignments

Go into and document our own as well as different cultural communities.

Conduct a critical historical survey of one or more groups.

Interview/research multiple generations (young and old) to gain insights

into their dreams and aspirations.

Develop locally and historically situated blueprints for the realization of

Researcher Stance and Research Questions

What does an investigation of the discourse and interaction patterns in

multicultural classrooms reveal?

What do successful multicultural classrooms look like?

Where are the points of tension in classrooms where educators open

James and Cherry McGee Banks, Handbook on Research on Multicultural

Gloria Ladson-Billings, The Dreamkeepers, Jossey-Bass.

Sonia Nieto, Language, Culture, and Teaching, Lawrence Erlbaum.

Belief 2: Funds of Knowledge

children’s interests and cultural backgrounds.

Encourage students to research and document life in their homes and

Teacher Education Activities/Assignments

Have course participants conduct community ethnographies as class

Invite course participants to identify their own funds of knowledge and to

and what they know.

Researcher Stance and Research Questions

Ethnographies of literacy in settings outside school.

Research in classrooms where cultural and linguistically diverse students are

knowledge their students bring to the classroom into their pedagogic

for underachieving students,” American Educational Research Journal.

Luis Moll, et al., “Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative

approach to connect homes and families,” Theory into Practice.

lifelong learning, Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.

Belief 3: Inquiring into Practice

To empower students who have been traditionally disenfranchised by public education,

Document the efforts of a student in your classroom through periodic

Form/join a group of colleagues who periodically use inquiry protocols that

backgrounds and experiences.

cultural traditions, or to share an area of their expertise.

Design action research projects that incorporate socially responsive

methods and material.

Expect students to read and critique multiethnic and multicultural children’s

Miracle’s Boys; Uncle Jed’s Barbershop).

responsible classrooms in an era of high stakes testing?

they bring to the surface?

Linda Christensen, Reading, Writing, and Rising Up. Rethinking Schools.

Students. Teachers College Press.